I would be doing dishes and laundry and singing to some music on the radio and as I was thinkin about the bills, I'd think, and say in my mind to God, "It would be a great week if i had just $20 more this week to get by", I'd be lookin' in the fridge for some dinner, and be thinkin' and say in my mind to God, "I haven't had one of those sirloin burgers for a while and it would be great to have one for dinner".
Without saying anything about this to anyone, and even forgetting about it myself, after about 10 minutes my husband comes home from work and greets me and I ask what's in the bag. He looks down and says, "oh, I had to swing by Mom's to change a bulb and she gave me this". I look in the bag and it's a package of two sirloin burgers and a $20 dollar bill. I thought i was tripping...seriously. This exact thing went on all the time. Just crazy. So I started just doin' stuff like that all the time and it kept going on. I knew there were things about God I didn't understand, but I knew he was there and that he was interested in my everday life. That's it. Yeah, I've asked for healings of people and their pain stopped immediately and stuff, but this is what had the greatest most profound impact on me. It was a relationship, a close one.
Since this is a thread about science, let's approach this the way a scientist might. We have a phenomenon we want to explain: your apparent ability to wish for certain things ($20 bills, sirloin burgers, and "healings for people"). There are several models that can explain the data:
1) Yahweh, as you conceive him/interpret his message from the Bible actually exists, and personally acts to alter the course of events in Universe in your favor, for relatively trivial things.
2) You have some sort of psychic or magickal power by which you can personally alter the course of events in Universe in your favor; your focus on the desire causes the effect, you're just attributing the positive results to Yahweh by mistake.
3) Some other entity or force acts to alter the course of events in Universe in your favor, but it acts for its own reasons and is not concerned about getting the credit.
4) Coincidence (improbable events do happen, confirmation bias, etc.): There are 300 million people in America alone. This means that even if something is quite improbable (catching a home run baseball from one's favorite batter, having stoplights turn green just as you arrive, thinking of someone just before they call you, etc.), the odds can still be in favor of it happening fairly often, to somebody. "Confirmation bias" means that we tend to remember things that confirm our beliefs and forget things that don't. In this case, times when you wished for a Sirloin Burger and a $20.00 bill, and got them, would stand out in your memory, vs. times you wished for a giant Special Dark bar, and didn't get one.
Of these models, the one I find least credible is the first, especially if you conceive of Yahweh as a benevolent entity, rather than a heartless trickster. To imagine Yahweh rising from his throne to make sure you get $20.00 and a Sirloin Burger, but sitting back with folded arms watching indifferently while all the horrific things you described in your previous post happened to your mother...the heartlessness and arbitrariness of it beggars the imagination. The same thing applies to #3.
Of the "paranormal" explanations, #2 at least has the virtue of being consistent with the data without requiring the paranormal force be malevolent and capricious. In that model, psychic/magickal power could be limited to arranging small synchronicities and not up to the task of preventing major tragedies like what happened to your mother, famine and war in Africa, innocents killed by drunk drivers, etc.. Its seeming focus on tossing little goodies to you is just a result of how it's used and the modest extent of its power, which is why you're not a superhero. Model #2 also handily explains how people from other spiritual traditions (Hindu yogis, Amazonian shamans, people from Christian sects you consider heretical, etc.) often claim the same sort of effects to validate their beliefs: it's a power that all/many/some humans possess, and it just ends up being explained in terms of whatever local religion the wielder happens to believe in.
Model #2 (along with #1 and #3) has the major weakness that it, so far, has not been demonstrated to work under controlled conditions designed to rule out coincidence and fraud. Parapsychologists have spent a hundred years trying to demonstrate the existence of some form of "psi" and, to my knowledge at least, have failed. At least, they have not demonstrated it in a sufficiently convincing manner to change the minds of qualified skeptics in scientific fields.
Model #4 has the advantage of fitting the data while being parsimonious--it does not require any major revision of other facts about how Universe works that have been amply and repeatedly demonstrated, e.g. in physics and cognitive neuroscience.
So, until more convincing evidence comes in, I lean toward #4 as the most probable explanation.
I suppose it's like anything else that we can take for granted: marriage, children, parents, dogs and the list goes on. Those were the best times of my life. I feel a hope that when I get back to it, it's going to be even better than that. God answers me in my mind a lot of the time when I'm mad and i know it's him cause it's the same steady quiet voice telling me shit i don't want to hear cause i want what i want which is not to be inconvenienced sometimes
People from just about any spiritual tradition you could care to name (Oracles at Delphi and Karnak, shamans, New Age channelers, Christians you consider "heretical," etc.) also claim to receive messages from their gods/goddesses, experience apparitions, feel communion with the deity, Nirvana/Enlightenment, etc.. So, we could assume that everybody's gods are real, or that the "voices" people think come from gods come from their "Higher Self" or some common source that chooses to wear the mask of whatever deity is being invoked, or that they're voices emerging from the subconscious/unconscious mind. Your model (that one, particular conception of one, particular god, is real) has the worst fit to the available data.
